A ‘boy with a face but without a story’

Usha Alexander recounts a surreal scene:

On the final evening of the [Durga Puja], as we waited down by the riverside to watch the procession of revelers dunk their idols, a small fishing boat pulled up and deposited a freshly dead human corpse on the bank, then sailed off (perhaps to avoid getting embroiled with the authorities). It was the body of a handsome young man, not more than 20, strong and flush with health, except for being dead. … The body was left directly in the path of the merry-makers who, refusing to let their enthusiasm be tempered, simply chose to dance around the corpse, careful not to step on it. At this moment, the whole spectacle turned surreal for me: the dancing-clapping jubilation of the devout holding up their glossy-painted, ornamented idols built of myth and mud as they surrounded the awkward, still corpse made of real flesh, the boy with a face but without a story.